


Working Through It

by Trinary



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Culture, Existential Crisis, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Non-Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Oral Sex, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Seeker Trines, Smut, Spark Sexual Interfacing, Threesome - F/M/M, Thundercracker's Terrible Screenplays, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-20 08:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary
Summary: “TC,” Skywarp says, “I’m, like, ninety percent sure that humans don’t have interface cables.”Thundercracker squawks and almost knocks him over trying to get the script out of his hands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn't get out of my head, so here it is. It's your problem now. Takes place at some nebulous point before the end of TAAO.
> 
> Sometimes you need to see a lady and a giant robot double-teaming another giant robot while they all recover from lifetimes of war.

Thundercracker lives in a shack in the wilderness.

And, yeah, sure, it’s a sturdy, well-insulated metal shack with a three-ton blast door, built to cybertronian scale and fully wired for the zillion monitors he has going all the time, but still a shack. It’s made of old shipping containers packed full of who-knows-what. It sits in the middle of nowhere and nothing.

That’s not dangerous. Not like it would be back home, but it feels wrong. People— _seekers_ —aren’t meant to be solitary. Then again, it’s not like Thundercracker has much choice. The humans don’t want him any closer than he has to be. Skywarp doesn’t want to be closer to _them_ than he has to.

Skywarp doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

Thundercracker gives Skywarp the tour. “—And here’s the energon distiller, and over there is where I keep my scripts, and there’s Buster—hi, Buster. Buster, this is Skywarp. Don’t bite him.”

That won’t be a problem. The little organic animal looks about as dangerous as a rock. Less dangerous, probably. Thundercracker seems expectant, though, and Skywarp allows the thing to rub its chemoreceptors all over the back of his hand.

It’s… Wet. He shudders.

“I don’t know why you keep that thing,” Skywarp says.

“Don’t be mean to Buster.” Thundercracker looks at the dog. “You shouldn’t listen to him, girl. He’ll come around.”

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Thundercracker sits on the couch he built. When he notices Skywarp looking at it, Thundercracker pats the couch and says, “I tried my hand at sculpture, for a while. It didn’t work out.”

The couch is made of crushed, non-sentient human cars, compacted into layers. That’s… Morbid. Skywarp doesn’t want to think about it very hard, which, fortunately, is something he’s good at.

He can’t think of anything to say. This is getting awkward. He shouldn’t have come. Skywarp’s not sure why he agreed in the first place, except that he _does_ know, and admitting it feels pathetic.

No matter what either of them may or may not have hypothetically done to ruin their relationship, they’re both stuck on this stupid planet. Every day, sunup to sundown, it’s humans, humans, _humans_. The organics have even got Skywarp counting time like they do. When he’s not fighting off aliens, or wraiths, or other, evil humans—which, compared to the war, is a vacation—there’s not much to do for entertainment.

Flying by yourself gets lonely. Human media doesn’t make any sense. Cybertronian media is thin on the ground, for obvious reasons. He can’t go out for a drink. Skywarp has the choice between talking to the same humans he’s stuck around all day or looking for a fellow cybertronian, but every other non-organic on this dirtball planet is an autobot or pit-damned _Soundwave_. Which, no. Obviously. Skywarp spends most nights bored out of his mind in a hangar full of non-sentient planes, and if he doesn’t do something, he’ll end up talking to them. Sometimes he just wants to hang out with somebody who isn’t so fragging _small_.

So, he and Thundercracker had started talking again.

It began as tentative, meaningless conversation over the comms. Complaints about whatever ridiculous thing the humans, Optimus Prime or Starscream has done now. Ol’ Screamer, emperor of the _etcetera etcetera and so on_. Who’d have ever thought, right?

They don’t talk about Starscream much. That one still hurts.

Before either of them knew it, he and Thundercracker were falling into old patterns. Skywarp sends Thundercracker snapshots of things he sees—the scenery is about all this planet has going for it—and Thundercracker sends him terrible screenplays to critique. Skywarp’s critique is mostly, _what are you even doing, TC, human media sucks_ , but Thundercracker keeps telling him that if he’d just sit down and watch _Nurse Whitney_ with him he’d understand. Skywarp has doubts.

They’ve known each other a long time. It’s natural to fall back into one another’s orbit. It’s not that weird.

It’s totally weird.

“I guess that’s all,” Thundercracker says. “Sorry my place isn’t very big. Uh… Do you want to watch a movie, or… Oh! I could show you my new script. I finished it last night.”

Thundercracker pushes a sheaf of wood-pulp pages into Skywarp’s hands. Skywarp has no choice but to take them. Thundercracker sits back on the couch and Skywarp isn’t sure what to do.

Skywarp reads the first couple of paragraphs. Susan Journeyer arrives at work. Josh Boyfriend wears an attractive set of organic coverings that she admires. There’s a patient not responding to treatment, and a new character introduced: a psychologist, transferred in from another hospital. Skywarp can already tell the psychologist will be the villain. There’s not much room for setup in these stories, and Thundercracker might be many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.

Thundercracker fidgets after a minute of silence. “I guess that’ll take you a while to read. Can I get you anything?”

Skywarp waves Thundercracker off and sits down against the wall. The couch is unsettling. Skywarp doesn’t want to make this more awkward than it already is, though he doesn’t know how it could be. Somewhere in the background, Thundercracker moves around, doing something. Skywarp’s stuck reading… This.

He has to pay attention, too, because Thundercracker will want to hear what he thinks when he’s done.

“You know, I don’t think _Boyfriend_ is a normal human name,” Skywarp says.

Thundercracker doesn’t turn around. “Yeah, I realized that later. But by then I’d already named him, and I’d have to go back and change it. English is hard to get right.”

“It’s phonetic. How hard can it be?”

“That’s why it’s hard, though! You have to say exactly what you mean. There’s no tone. No modifier glyphs. You have to write down what people are thinking and feeling all the time, or it doesn’t make sense. Look at this.”

He pings Skywarp the glyph for {joy}, tagged with self/insincere/deceptive[deliberate].

“It’s obvious, right?” Thundercracker asks, “but, if I want to write it down, it’s a whole paragraph. _‘Of course I’m happy,’ Josh lied, blatantly, and Susan knew that he was lying and he knew that she knew_ …” He waves a hand. “It’s complicated.”

Skywarp might venture that, maybe, people don’t need to know everything all the time. But he’s never written a story in his life. What does he know?

The thing about Thundercracker’s scripts is that they’re… Well, they’re not _horrible_ , exactly. What they are is clumsy and stilted. No sane living creature would say a word of his dialog. There are good ideas, scattered around. Striking ones, even, that make Skywarp pause and reread to be sure he caught what he thought he did. But every bit is buried ten layers deep under the impenetrable strata of alien media clichés, filtered through a second language, and printed onto dried plant pulp.

If Thundercracker wanted to, he could write in Neocybex instead of messing around with symbols meant to approximate chirps and grunts. He could copy his work onto a datapad or into someone else’s processor. He could strip away the conventions of human television, but he doesn’t.

Skywarp doesn’t get _why_.

Thundercracker isn’t even writing about humans, not really. Sure, he _sort_ of is, but with the depth of a nanite pattern laid over a warbuild’s anti-tank armour. It’s not like Skywarp is any kind of expert on human culture, but there are patches where Thundercracker obviously didn’t care about getting things right. There’s the way he mis-estimates distance and time; there are the sanded-over places where he forgot for a second that Josh Boyfriend is only handsome like an F-22 fighter jet and can’t become one. Susan gets her makeup touched up at the detailing shop once a week. It’s the little things like that.

Thundercracker’s talking to someone. For a klik, Skywarp thinks it’s the dog. When he peers over the top of the script, though, Thundercracker’s human friend has shown up. What’s her name? Marsha? Melissa?

_Marissa_. Marissa Faireborn, right. That’s the one. Buster dances around her ankles and Skywarp is glad to leave her to it. Better her than him.

Then Marissa looks up and catches him watching. Skywarp goes back to reading, quickly, and pretends she’s not there. He hopes he won’t have to talk to her.

_Thundercracker and Marissa_ is a relationship Skywarp can’t get a handle on. On the surface it’s straightforward enough: just like the humans Skywarp hangs around with, they’re half soldiers and half handlers, there to point him at targets, keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t go getting any big ideas.

Thundercracker seems to like her, though.

It’s obvious that, if Thundercracker’s patterned Josh Boyfriend on himself, Marissa is Susan. They have the same long, brown mane, the same muscular build—Skywarp assumes that’s muscular for a human, anyway—and a handful of specific mannerisms that Skywarp sees on her now. The way she pushes her hair back over her shoulder. The way she sits. Skywarp isn’t sure what to do with the realization and keeps half an eye on her, surreptitiously.

It’s the loneliness, Skywarp guesses. It has to be. They aren’t meant to exist alone, seekers especially; it’s not a surprise that, abandoned by his people, Thundercracker latched onto whatever he could get. The human. The dog. Skywarp can’t claim to be any better. He trusted Galvatron and the rest to wire him into a teleportation rig, like some kind of idiot. Look how that turned out.

The script in Skywarp’s hand is getting strange, but strange in a way he can’t put his finger on. The psychologist is evil, as predicted. Susan is trying to protect her patient from him as Josh runs interference. Skywarp can almost hear the tropes screaming as they’re forced into new and unfamiliar shapes. He feels like he should understand what Thundercracker is getting at, but he doesn’t. As far as he knows, a psychologist is a type of therapist. Cybertron has those, too; Thundercracker wouldn’t misunderstand that, so what in the world…?

Things click into place as Skywarp realizes that when Thundercracker writes _psychologist_ , what he means is _mnemosurgeon_. The other hospital is a thinly disguised relinquishment clinic.

Yikes. Skywarp sets the script down in a hurry.

He’ll just pick out a different one to read, and hope Thundercracker won’t notice. Thundercracker will make him look at all these things eventually, after all. Skywarp grabs another sheaf of organic flimsies from the bottom of the stack and peels back a couple of pages.

It’s a war story about a soldier, betrayed by his comrades, shot in the back, and left for dead on a foreign battlefield. Nope. _Nope_. _No_.

Skywarp might be the dumb one, but he’s not an idiot.

Maybe there’s a reason that Thundercracker writes in English. Maybe there’s a reason he keeps the stories in wood pulp, chemical ink and his own head. It’s ephemeral. It doesn’t _matter_.

Maybe that’s the point.

If Thundercracker wrote in Neocybex, if he handed out scripts on datapads or in softcopy, versions would survive. For millions of years, until the heat death of the universe, they would survive. Primus knows there are enough copies of Megatron’s early poetry floating around, no matter how the functionists tried to obliterate them.

Copies that Megatron would probably rather not see the light of day, at this point.

But… Wood pulp. _Humanity_. Skywarp has guns older than human culture. In a hundred years the paper will be ash, the writing itself will be vaguely remembered at best, and everyone who’s read the scripts will be dead.

Except for Skywarp.

The realization sets up an unsteadiness somewhere in his spark.

When Thundercracker talks up his scripts, it’s to humans. He makes them sound worse than they are, coated in tropes like lacquer for all that they have something true underneath. Maybe the clumsiness is deliberate. Maybe he doesn’t _want_ the stories to be remembered. The only other cybertronian that Skywarp knows has been offered a chance to read one in any seriousness is Soundwave, and both Skywarp and Thundercracker know Soundwave does not care about anything that has to do with humans, at all.

It’s self-sabotage. It’s _deliberate_. Why?

Why is he doing this?

Why show them to Skywarp, who will read them and remember?

By the time Thundercracker gets around to paying attention to Skywarp, Skywarp’s got a different script open in front of his face and is fully absorbed in pretending to read it.

“What do you think, Skywarp?” Thundercracker asks.

“I haven’t finished yet,” Skywarp says. “It’s really… Imaginative? Like, here, where you…”

Skywarp focuses on what’s on the page in front of him and freezes. He didn’t look at what he was grabbing. He figured that it couldn’t be any worse than the war story he probably wasn’t supposed to see.

It’s amazing how wrong he was.

This one is more like prose than script, and even more flowery than usual. It’s _blatantly_ explicit. Susan Journeyer and the mysterious newcomer Ciel Weft have Josh Boyfriend pinned to a human berth. Soft music plays. Susan kisses Josh and tells him to behave while Ciel reaches down and—

Skywarp stares. He forces his vocalizer online in a burst of static.

“TC,” he says, “I’m, like, ninety percent sure that humans don’t have interface cables.”

Thundercracker squawks and almost knocks him over trying to get the script out of his hands.


	2. Chapter 2

Marissa’s used to Thundercracker’s house feeling huge. With two ex-decepticons, a human, and a pug-mix rescue dog jammed into it, it seems downright cramped.

Marissa had shown up to talk to Thundercracker, keep him company, and maybe play with Buster for a while. Thundercracker’s too strong for the type of tug-of-war that Buster likes, and he tends to break the toys. If Marissa had known being the _handler-slash-space government representative-slash-babysitter-slash-emotional companion_ to a thirty-foot space robot would involve so much wrestling with dogs, she would have signed up a lot sooner—but Thundercracker has company already.

Marissa wasn’t expecting that. She feels uncharitable for the thought, but when has he ever?

Literally, ever. It’s kind of sad.

So Thundercracker comes over and says hi, while Marissa keeps half an eye on the seeker sitting against the wall. It’s _weird_. She looks at Skywarp and sees _purple Thundercracker_. Aside from the paint job and a few surface-detail differences, mostly around the wings, they’re as identical as if they rolled off the same assembly line. Which is extra weird, because Marissa’s pretty sure that’s not how it works.

Getting accurate information on giant robot culture is like pulling teeth. A research team at Stanford combs Thundercracker’s screenplays for clues, but that hasn’t gotten far. They keep pushing Marissa to get him to write something set on Cybertron, but Marissa figures that four million years of war is enough to make anyone not want to think about home.

What they gathered from the autobots about cybertronian reproduction was a confusing, semi-mystical ramble about sparks and wells and living metal, and after some debate they reached the conclusion that cybertronians might _literally_ crawl out of the ground fully-formed.

Either way, a factory floor doesn’t come into it.

So Marissa’s hanging out on the edge of Thundercracker’s hangar-sized house, throwing a ball for Buster to fetch, when Skywarp says something Marissa doesn’t catch and Thundercracker jumps on him.

They go over with an earth-shaking crash. Skywarp pops out of existence and back into it on his feet, leaving Thundercracker sprawled on the floor. Buster barks. Marissa grabs Buster’s collar before the dog can get into the mix.

“You’re not supposed to be reading that one,” Thundercracker says. He tries to snatch the script from Skywarp’s hand. “It’s not done!”

Skywarp holds the script out of Thundercracker’s reach. “I’m pretty sure humans don’t trine up, either.”

“Some do. I saw it on the Internet.”

“The Internet is _fake_.”

“It’s not all fake!”

Marissa has no idea what’s going on. She rewinds the conversation a few seconds to what started this whole thing, when she wasn’t really listening. Skywarp had said…

“Wait,” Marissa asks, “what’s an interface cable?”

Thundercracker and Skywarp both freeze. Thundercracker looks at her like a deer in the headlights. Like a… Like an alien war machine in the face of a… She doesn’t even know.

Skywarp starts to get this _look_ on his face. It reminds Marissa of Starscream, budding amusement and something near-conspiratorial, and he’s sending it straight at her.

“No,” Thundercracker says. “Don’t you dare, Skywarp.”

Skywarp shakes the script. Pages rustle. “You wrote her into the thing. She deserves to see it if she wants.”

“Susan Journeyer isn’t Marissa! They might share certain _archetypes_ , and physical attributes, and they like the same ice cream, but—”

“What’s ice cream?”

“A frozen, emulsified lipid suspension mixed with plant sugars and aromatic esters. It’s popular.”

“Gross,” Skywarp says, and uses Thundercracker’s distraction to toss the script to Marissa overhand.

The script thumps into Marissa’s arms before Thundercracker can do anything about it. When Thundercracker lunges for the pages, Skywarp holds him back. Now Marissa’s worried.

“It’s a first draft,” Thundercracker says, desperately, “I was still working the plot out. I don’t—nobody was supposed to _see_ it. I haven’t even written scene six!”

The screenplay falls open where Skywarp’s big fingers creased it. Marissa starts reading, and she’s looking at… Okay, it’s a sex scene. A sex scene involving Susan, Josh and Ciel, whoever that is. She guesses that explains _trine_.

Or, at least, it starts out like a sex scene. There’s a lot of talking, kissing and touching, though the _way_ they’re touching is strange. Something about lines and repetitive movements?

A few pages later, she’s staring in mounting horror at the Lovecraftian lovechild of erotica, a technical manual and grotesquely detailed torture.

There are loving touches. There are electromagnetic current modulation equations. There are chests being cracked open and things inside being touched. Ciel Weft is playing around in Josh Boyfriend’s… Memories? His _brain_? She can’t be reading that right—while Susan Journeyer _sits on Josh Boyfriend’s face_ , and _holy mother of god_.

Marissa’s cheeks are on fire. Okay, so _that’s_ something she just read. She can’t wrap her head around the context. Is an interface cable a robot dick? Do cybertronians have dicks? What about vaginas? Both? Neither? Marissa can’t believe she’s asking that question.

_Ciel Weft_ finally clicks. Thundercracker is a menace with a thesaurus.

“Marissa?” Thundercracker asks. His voice is very small.

Marissa clears her throat. It takes a couple of tries before she can speak, and when she does, what comes out is, “I read this whole thing, and I still have no idea what an interface cable is.”

“I _told_ you,” says Skywarp.

Marissa gestures at the page. “I don’t… This _is_ sex I’m reading, right? I thought it was, but then there’s this part in the middle where you start talking about fan oscillation RPMs.”

Skywarp busts up laughing. Thundercracker makes a noise like he’s dying. He goes limp in Skywarp’s arms, slides all the way down onto the floor and lies there, one arm thrown dramatically over his face. Skywarp only laughs harder.

Thundercracker groans. “Let me offline in peace.”

“You did this to yourself,” Skywarp says.

“ _You_ did this to me.”

“It’s your own fault for writing stories like that and leaving them around, you filthy organic fragger.”

“You went digging!”

“I didn’t have to look far. You’ve written _how_ many of these things, and this is the one I grab? What are the odds?” Skywarp shakes his head. “Someone was going to see it eventually. If not me, then her. What did you think would happen?”

Thundercracker says nothing.

The silence stretches. Skywarp’s expression goes odd.

Skywarp nudges Thundercracker with a foot. “What _did_ you think would happen?”

Still nothing.

Thundercracker’s fans pick up a panicked whine. He won’t look Skywarp or Marissa in the eye. He turns over and starts to get up, but freezes when Skywarp crouches next to him.

“Were you hoping it would?” He asks, “were you hoping that someone would notice, and—”

“Shut up. Don’t be an idiot, Skywarp,” Thundercracker snaps, “I wasn’t hoping anything. I didn’t… It was… It’s not real. None of it would ever happen. It’s just a story.”

Skywarp’s hand comes up.

Thundercracker flinches, but Skywarp’s fingers only come to rest on the side of Thundercracker’s helm.

The moment drags out. Marissa doesn’t dare make a sound. This has taken a turn, but she can’t tell where it’s going. She keeps expecting violence.

“You were alone,” Skywarp says.

Thundercracker makes a soft, terrible sound. He twitches like he’s going to pull away, but he doesn’t.

Marissa feels like an intruder. She shouldn’t be watching this. She doesn’t know what this _is_. She knows what it looks like, but her footing has slipped. Things don’t always mean what they seem to.

It hits her, from time to time, that she’s dealing with aliens. Sometimes they seem almost human. Sometimes she gets comfortable. Sometimes, it’s just her, Thundercracker, and Buster playing fetch. Then, suddenly, it’s like, _oh yeah, they’re massive, ancient death machines from space,_ and the top of Marissa’s head draws level with Thundercracker’s knee. He or Skywarp could kill her without meaning to. Without even noticing.

Buster’s lost interest in Skywarp and Thundercracker, but she’s also tired of playing with the tennis ball.

“Hey, Buster,” Marissa says, and lures the dog off to the blanket pile in the corner, “why don’t you come over here and take a nap?”

Marissa leaves enough treats to keep Buster occupied and out from underfoot. It doesn’t seem like a good time for a little dog to be running around. Not the best time for a somewhat-bigger human, either, but here goes nothing. She hopes the team from Stanford appreciates this.

Marissa takes a deep breath. She walks out toward Skywarp and Thundercracker, who haven’t moved. She hadn’t known a thing of Thundercracker’s size could look so vulnerable.

“What’s a trine?” Marissa asks.

Skywarp twitches and spits static. Maybe he forgot that she was there.

“Is it a cybertronian thing?” Marissa asks, again.

“It’s—sort of,” Thundercracker says, all in a rush, “it’s a seeker thing? We group up in threes, for stability. On our own, we’re a little, uh…”

“Useless?” Skywarp suggests.

“Erratic. I was going to say _flighty_ , but, in English, that’s a really dumb pun.”

It’s a _horrible_ pun. Marissa restrains herself from smacking her hands over her face. “So it’s, like… A romantic thing?”

“It can be,” Thundercracker allows. “Not always.”

“Screamer liked romantic gestures,” Skywarp says.

Thundercracker snorts. “No, he liked drama.”

Marissa nearly chokes on her own tongue. When she manages words, all she gets out is, “ _you_ and _Starscream_?”

“Me and him and Starscream, yeah.”

“Starscream. As in, the ruler of Cybertron, Starscream. As in, the asshole I keep having to argue politics with for the fate of Earth, Starscream. That Starscream?”

Skywarp groans. “Stop saying Starscream.”

“We were trine since before the war. How do you not know?” Thundercracker asks.

_Because you never said anything_ , Marissa wants to say, but god, of _course_ , why would he ever have? It’s such old news that Marissa would never have found out on her own. Everyone had heard, so no one needed to say it. That’s what you get when you mix it up with a culture with millions of years in living memory.

The three of them were together for a minimum of four million years. And then they broke up? Probably, given that they’re scattered across solar systems and empires and until today none of them have had much to do with one another, for a while. If Marissa had to guess, she’d say that’s the war’s influence again. She doesn’t understand many of their war’s specifics, but she knows how they go bad the longer they drag on.

Marissa’s going to milk them both for every bit of embarrassing Starscream gossip she can, and she’ll enjoy every minute.

“Marissa?” Thundercracker asks, tentatively. “Are you mad at me?”

For a second, Marissa doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. “You mean about the story?”

Thundercracker nods.

Marissa sighs. “I’m not mad. Just, maybe don’t write things like that about people without asking, first.”

“Oh,” he says, “so, can I?”

“Do you _want_ to?” Marissa asks, before she can think.

Her chest goes tight, all hot and buzzing as she realizes what she said wasn’t _no_. Even more so when Thundercracker nods, slowly, like he’s not sure he’s allowed.

“About me?” Marissa checks, just to be sure.

Thundercracker nods again.

“ _Why_?”

“Well, I, uh. I like you. Your hair’s a pretty colour. You’re smart. You’re nice. Buster likes you, too, and sometimes I think about what if you were _me_ sized or I was _you_ sized and, oh, _Primus_ , I need to stop talking.”

Skywarp watches all this with his brow going more and more furrowed. Here, it smooths out. He looks at Marissa. The full weight of his attention falls on her, but she’s had a lot of experience with standing up to that without being crushed.

“Because you balance him out,” Skywarp says.

As she’s processing that, Skywarp shifts positions. Thundercracker stills.

Skywarp’s hand slides down and across to rest on Thundercracker’s pauldron, and he teases a seam with a fingertip, up and down, up and down, and from there up the edge of his wing.

Thundercracker’s ventilation system stutters.

Well, Marissa’s gotten in good with Thundercracker’s four-million-year maybe-not-an-ex, which wasn’t what she set out to do when she got up this morning, but she’ll take it.

Marissa gets closer before she can think the better of it. She sets a hand on Thundercracker’s leg. Part of her always expects his plating to be as cold as dead metal, but it isn’t. It’s a little above room temperature, not quite skin-warm. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Every computer Marissa’s ever owned threw off heat like a full-time job, and she doesn’t see why Thundercracker should be any different.

Skywarp grins down at her. “Want to see what his interface cables look like?”

Thundercracker whines.


	3. Chapter 3

A few things make a lot more sense, now. The thing about touching lines, for example. It’s transformation seams and the gaps between plating. Marissa won’t risk her fingers on them—she’s done enough industrial safety seminars, thanks, and crushing injuries are no joke—but she plays with some fine plate mesh from her perch on Thundercracker’s shoulder.

Skywarp dips his hands into the broad gaps fearlessly. Marissa doesn’t know what he’s touching in there, but if the sounds are any indication, Thundercracker enjoys it.

Marissa turns around, stretches out and kisses Thundercracker’s bottom lip. It’s wider than her head. Thundercracker looks startled.

She puts on the peppiest voice she can muster. “So, tell me what he’s doing to you. I don’t have any seams, but I’d love to hear about yours.”

Somewhere behind her, Skywarp laughs. Marissa isn’t sure what he does next, but Thundercracker’s whole frame tenses. He gasps.

“Go on. Explain it, mister creative writing,” Skywarp tells him. “I want to hear how you translate this.”

Thundercracker raises a hand to touch the transformation seam beside Marissa. The seam’s about as wide as her arm. He could probably get a finger in there, if he wanted. “My sensor net runs under my armour. Temperature, pressure, all of that.”

Marissa knocks lightly on the nearest plate. “If these are meant to transmit touch from the surface, they must be _really_ sensitive underneath.”

“They are.” The smile in Skywarp’s voice is audible. “What else, TC?”

“A-and there’s the, uh, the wiring, and neural nodes for my actuators. Touching them directly builds a charge, and, _oh_ , do that again!”

“Ask me nicely.”

“ _Please_ ,” Thundercracker begs, shameless.

Heat pools low in Marissa’s belly. This, at least, is the same.

Thundercracker’s hand shifts to brush Marissa’s clothed thigh. He hesitates there like he’s afraid she’ll break, even as she rests her palms on top of his fingers. It’s not an unreasonable fear, but she trusts him not to hurt her intentionally.

He’s been a war machine for a long time. She thinks he’s tired of it.

“I don’t know how to touch you,” he says.

“I thought you looked it up on the Internet,” Marissa teases.

He mutters, “the Internet’s fake and not real.”

In a way, it’s kind of a relief. God help Marissa if she has to explain humanity’s more esoteric kinks to giant robots. Whips and chains? Fine. All the biological fixation on fertility? Sure, whatever. But balloons? Vore? Cake sitting? _Jesus Christ_. She might die of shame on behalf of her entire species.

“It’s probably better you didn’t, honestly,” Marissa says, “most porn’s exaggerated. The rest can get into some, uh, strange territory.”

“Don’t worry about that. Weird porn’s a universal constant,” Skywarp says, as he plays with Thundercracker’s seams. “I wonder if any of the archives back home are still active? There was this one amazing scene with—oh, what was his name? The autobots shot him right after the war started, but his wings were fantastic. Anyway, so he’s standing in this shallow pool of oil, right? And then these three minibots come in—”

There’s a slithery metal-on-metal sound behind her. Marissa turns around.

At first Marissa’s not sure what she’s looking at. Part of Thundercracker’s chest has _holes_ in it, armour missing like Skywarp’s ripped the plates straight off. She can see into his _guts_. Then the sound comes again. Marissa realizes the plating’s just shifted aside, retracted into some hidden place. What lies exposed on either side of Thundercracker’s cockpit are a series of sockets, and a pair of prehensile metal tentacles tipped with spiky jacks.

The jacks do not look… Fun. Skywarp’s own chest hangs half open. He picks up a tentacle and plugs it into himself. He does the same to Thundercracker in reverse, and a slow shiver runs through Thundercracker, head to toe.

“Interface cables,” Skywarp says, smug.

“Does that hurt?” Marissa asks.

“Why would it?”

Fair enough. She consults the script. “Can you really watch his memories?”

“ _Watch_ is probably the wrong word.” Skywarp looks thoughtful. “Memory. Emotion. Surface thoughts. I can see him. He can see me. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Marissa says, softly.

That’s… That’s the most romantic thing she’s ever heard. That’s a _lot_. Marissa’s cynical heart melts a little as another shiver runs through Thundercracker. Skywarp leans down to kiss him; his wings shiver. They leave a gap between their bodies. At first Marissa thinks they’re being considerate of her, but that’s not quite it.

They’re seekers. They do this in threes. Skywarp and Thundercracker both have sockets left empty. There’s space, unconscious space, left for a size Marissa can’t hope to fill. She’s conscious of her fragility. Her mortality. She’s so small. She’s so… _Finite_.

Four million years.

Thundercracker, Skywarp and Starscream were together for _four million years_. When the pyramids were built, when Babylon fell, when the first row of wheat was planted in the fertile crescent, and it’s nothing. _Nothing_. Marissa is a firefly in the night. She’s an eyeblink. Cold washes over her. The middle of sex is no place for an existential crisis, but here she is.

“Marissa?” Thundercracker asks.

_What’s it like?_ Marissa almost asks, _what’s it like to wonder what you’ll be doing a thousand years from now, and not to worry about tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow? To jump up into orbit? To remember when the universe was young?_

But they were at war for four million years, too. The universe is an order of magnitude older than that. Their population is much smaller than it used to be. Maybe all things are mayflies, in the end, and the trick is not to think about it.

“What’s he showing you?” Marissa asks, instead.

Thundercracker groans in embarrassment. “What he remembers of the thing with the minibots.”

Marissa laughs so hard she collapses.

Thundercracker catches her. She lies half in his hand, wiping away helpless tears. Each of his fingers is as thick as her forearm. _God_ , he’s big. If he had a cock it’d be as long as her leg. The thought sends her into another gale of laughter. Imagine dealing with the cleanup. Just imagine! How is she going to do this? He has hands and a mouth, sure, but neither is exactly delicate.

“I’m not sure how this is going to work,” she says.

Thundercracker starts to withdraw.

Marissa catches his fingers before he can. “I didn’t mean _stop_. You can touch me. I just… Hmm. Logistics.”

As she thinks, Thundercracker runs a tentative fingertip up her chest and down again, up and down. It takes Marissa longer than it should to realize he’s tracing the seam in the front of her shirt, the buttons too tiny for his fingers. Marissa’s own hand follows in his wake.

“Do you want me to open this?”

Thundercracker’s fans rev up.

She’ll take that as a yes. Marissa pops the first two buttons.

Then she realizes how Thundercracker’s looking at her. His eyes stay glued to the little motions of her fingers, and when she puts it together she almost laughs again. Her interface cables would be here, if she had any. She’s doing kinky robot striptease.

Marissa undoes the rest of the buttons achingly slowly. By the time her shirt hangs loose, Thundercracker’s fans roar. Low, throbbing vibration hums up from below. Marissa rolls her hips against a ridge in his armour as her spine goes liquid.

“Oh,” she says, thickly, “oh, that’s… That’s nice.”

Thundercracker runs his fingers up her bare, seamless skin wonderingly. He’s gentle. He leaves goosebumps in his wake. It could be the touch itself; it could be the gathering electrostatic charge that hums in the air around him, like wool in winter. When he gets close to her head a few of the hairs that have fallen out of her ponytail rise and float.

Marissa reaches to shrug her shirt off.

Skywarp stops her. “Leave it on.”

“Really?”

“TC’s into it, the kinky fragger.”

Marissa grins down at Thundercracker’s face. “Are you?”

“I’m in his head,” Skywarp says, “he can’t hide from me. He likes that you’re soft.”

Marissa grins wider. “I want to hear him say it.”

Thundercracker’s tongue-tip darts out to touch his lip. He whines.

“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’m—oh _slag_.”

Skywarp’s the one that groans, then. There’s another shifting-metal sound, louder than before. The room’s washed in glittering brilliance.

Marissa can’t help it. She looks back.

Thundercracker is… Thundercracker’s whole chest is just _open,_ cockpit split, a ball of energy spitting sparks in the hollow within. It’s mesmerizing. It’s kind of terrifying. It’s incredibly hot. She knows enough about cybertronian anatomy to understand that this might as well be his soul and it’s _there_ , on display.

How many times has Marissa sat in that cockpit as Thundercracker ferried her around, the heart of him hidden right under her feet? Is that something he thinks about? Her, and the star inside him pulsing a few feet away? The first time he agreed to carry her like that, did she know what she was asking? She’ll never be able to ride in him again without picturing this.

It sounds so dirty, now.

Skywarp looks at the spark fondly. He dips two fingers into its crackling outer orbit. Thundercracker arches and cries out.

Marissa edges away. “Is that safe?”

“Huh? You’re organic, so you probably shouldn’t touch it, but it’s not radioactive or anything.”

Skywarp says it like, _of course, why were you even worried about that_ , and again: giant alien death robots.

“Is that safe for _him_?” Marissa asks.

“As long as I’m careful.” He puts his mouth to the side of Thundercracker’s face, his voice a low rumble. “I’m always careful, aren’t I?”

“You’ve never been c-c-careful in your entire existence,” Thundercracker stutters. His voice glitches and trips over itself. “I’m, _oh,_ ‘Warp, _yes_.”

This must be the part of the screenplay Marissa _really_ didn’t get. It has no human analogue. Skywarp’s hand in Thundercracker’s open spark chamber is all the intimacy of fisting and the danger of a sharpened blade, and Thundercracker just… _Lets_ him. Marissa can’t tear her eyes away. Thundercracker’s plating’s getting hotter, skin-warm, blood-warm. A pulse of matching heat rolls up her spine.

“You’ve watched a lot more human porn than you’ll admit,” Skywarp says, and slides his other hand between Thundercracker’s legs.

There’s nothing there. It’s just more joints and armour. Thundercracker moans and arches into the touch anyway, thighs drawn close and shivering. Even if it did nothing for him, it’s definitely doing something for Marissa.

“Is this what you want?” Skywarp asks, “you want to get fragged like an organic? You could build a holoform for that, you know.” He tilts his head to look at Marissa, sly. “If you wanted to be her size.”

Thundercracker makes a wordless, wanting noise.

Skywarp doesn’t let up. “I could hold you still while she frags you. How would you like that? It’d be so easy. I could do it with one hand.”

Thundercracker dissolves into incoherent pleading. Marissa grinds against a ridge on Thundercracker’s vibrating armour, delicious pleasure throbbing in her veins. Then she remembers—

“Hang on,” she says, and gets up on her knees. “That’s not how the script goes. There’s one more thing.”

Thundercracker pants, open-mouthed, as Marissa crawls up to see him. She watches the realization jolt through him as she sits up and shoves her jeans off over her hips. She’s wet, underneath, underwear clinging to her, near-translucent. The brush of her own fingers makes her shiver.

Thundercracker stares. “But I’m too big.”

“You don’t have to get anything _in_ me,” Marissa grins, “you have a tongue. I guess you’ll have to be creative.”

Marissa is nowhere near being able to kneel over his face, or even stand. Thundercracker’s mouth is as broad as her hips. Marissa’s knees just brush the points of his jaw, but if she brings her legs forward, she can hook them over the angle of Thundercracker’s helm. He’s totally still as she settles herself there, and she realizes she can lean forward and see straight down into his eyes.

Okay. _That’s_ a little overwhelming.

The first tentative brush of his tongue is wide and blunt. It’s just— _pressure_. Marissa rocks up with a gasp.

“Oh,” Thundercracker says, and sounds startled, “you’re electroconductive.”

“I’m made of saltwater and iron, of course I’m electroconduct— _ah_!”

Thundercracker’s tongue is much too big to get inside her. Thundercracker tries anyway. He gets nowhere close. When he makes the tip as small as he can, it’s still big enough to touch _everything_ with every stroke. Soft, squirming wetness sweeps between her thighs, relentless. She presses her knuckles to her lips. It’s not quite like a human tongue; it’s smoother, harder. More like slick silicone than flesh. He’s the world’s biggest sex toy. Marissa rides his mouth, hands braced on the ridges of his helm.

The building charge on his lips should worry her, but it feels so _good_. Electric tingling spreads on her skin. Pins-and-needles shivers have her tensed and clenching on nothing. She’d push a couple of fingers into herself if she could stop grinding on Thundercracker’s face for one second, but she can’t.

She’s so close. She feels molten. Marissa tries to remember how the end of the script went; there was other stuff she didn’t understand, some things Ciel said to Josh, but Marissa doesn’t recall them.

She remembers the important part. Marissa leans forward and looks straight into Thundercracker’s eyes.

“I want to watch you come, Thundercracker.” She’s purring and sultry and all the other adjectives Thundercracker spackled on, all the things he thought she should be—but she’s herself, too, and in the end, that’s what counts. She holds on tight and works her thighs against his lips. “Overload for me.”

That’s never worked before in her life, but he makes this _noise_ , and he _does_.

Thundercracker’s whole body arches. His eyes flicker out. Charge surges under his plating in a crackling wave, and he drags her with him. Marissa clings to Thundercracker, every nerve alight, as his head tips back and he makes a sound like a dying hard drive and Skywarp curls close, shuddering too, his fans blasting hot air down the back of Marissa’s neck.

Marissa gasps in the comedown, sweat-damp and shaky, and runs her hands through her hair.

“Oh, wow,” she says, “that was… _Wow_.”

Neither Skywarp nor Thundercracker are moving.

They sit like machines in shutdown, even as Marissa eases herself backwards and finds her clothes. She slides to the floor and looks at them for a while. She hopes she hasn’t killed them with sex. It’d cause a nuclear-scale diplomatic incident. The paperwork alone would be horrific.

After about five minutes, Thundercracker’s cockpit knits itself together. His whirling spark disappears under layers of metal: grey, then blue, then gold. Skywarp’s eyes flicker on. He pushes himself up on one arm with a grunt and disconnects himself from Thundercracker, absentmindedly. His plating slithers back into place.

Skywarp looks dazed. “You recovered fast.”

“I kind of thought I’d fucked you to death, for a second there,” Marissa admits.

“Ha! Good luck. It’d take worse than you.”

“I’m not sure I survived,” Thundercracker says, from the floor.

“You’re fine, you big whiner. You loved it.”

Skywarp’s hand on Thundercracker’s hip is affectionate. They sit like that a while, and Thundercracker’s fingers come to rest on top of Skywarp’s. He looks at Skywarp, then tips his head sideways to see Marissa. He looks shy, suddenly, which is a hell of a way for a guy his size to be.

“Hi,” Thundercracker says.

“Hi,” Marissa says, back.

He’s waiting for her to do something. To take his hand, or run away screaming. To sneer at him, and laugh, and say, _that was terrible_ , or _you’re disgusting_ , or, _what were you expecting to happen_?

What _is_ he expecting?

Marissa finds the script where it fell and scoops it up. Thundercracker doesn’t move as she steps in close, or when she leans in to press a kiss to his cheek. His hand inches up like at any moment she’ll break and run. She leans into his touch, and he looks at her with eyes like festival lanterns.

She looks back.

“Did you write any more stories like this?” Marissa asks.

Thundercracker’s vocalizer clicks. “One or two. Or three. Maybe.”

Marissa smiles.

So does Skywarp.


End file.
